The last-generation secretary who rebuilt the Russian Communist Party
On 25 October 1991 Kuptsov met Yeltsin at the Kremlin and urged him to rescind the ban on the Russian Communist Party. Yeltsin refused; Kuptsov then spent a year and a half as the underground First Secretary, steering the party to its reconstituting congress.
A metallurgical engineer who rose from a Vologda collective farm and steel mill through the party ranks, he served as First Secretary of the Vologda Regional Committee (1985–1990). In 1990 he was brought to Moscow as a CPSU Central Committee Secretary, heading the department for socio-political organizations and helping found the Communist Party of the RSFSR. Elected its First Secretary in August 1991 to replace the hardline Ivan Polozkov, he refused to endorse the GKChP coup but was nonetheless investigated for 'complicity.' After Yeltsin banned the party, Kuptsov kept its organizational skeleton alive underground and steered the February 1993 reconstituting congress that became the CPRF, then served eleven years as Zyuganov's first deputy chairman while the new Russian Communist Party consolidated.
Career Timeline
- 1955–1958Collective farm worker, reading-room manager, and military service, Vologda Oblast
- 1958–1974Rolling-mill operator, foreman, and party committee secretary, Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant
- 1974–1979First Secretary, Cherepovets City Party Committee
- 1979–1984First Secretary, Vologda City Party Committee
- 1984–1985Second Secretary, Vologda Regional Party Committee
- 1985–1990First Secretary, Vologda Regional Party Committee
- 1989–1991People's Deputy of the USSR
- 1990–1991CPSU CC Secretary for socio-political organizations
- 1991.8–11First Secretary, CP RSFSR Central Committee
- 1993–2004First Deputy Chairman, CPRF Central Committee
- 1995–2011Deputy, State Duma of the Russian Federation (2nd–5th convocations)